The Scheherazade Job
The Leverage team must steal diamonds from the a vault belonging to Alexander Moto, a corrupt African official planning to assassinate his brother, the country's president. Hardison must face the music when the operation requires he play the violin with a symphony orchestra. The Client Jane Akinyemi, a reporter for The West African Newswire. Jane has written an article on Moto that reveals his involvement in the blood diamond market, and is being followed by Moto's men. Jane seeks the team's assistance when the Justice department abruptly stops an investigation of Moto for which she provided evidence. The Mark Alexander Moto, the younger brother of the president of Wadata is a wealthy, politically corrupt businessman. Educated in the United States and based in Boston, he maintains little connection with his home country. Moto deals in blood diamonds, which he uses to fund his lavish lifestyle, and has begun to peddle influence in his home country, where he plans to return with an eye to taking over the government. The Con Episode Notes * The episode features excerpts from Scheherazade (Op. 35), arguably Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's most popular work. Composed in 1888, the symphony consists of four movements, each named for a tale from the Arabian Nights. The movements are tied together by two unifying themes: the Sultan's theme, played by the brass and Scheherazade's theme, played on the violin. The final violin solo tells the tale of Scheherazade's final story and the Sultan's peaceful night's sleep. * Scheherazade is a legendary Persian queen, one of the many wives of King Shahryar. Having learned his first wife was unfaithful to him, and convinced that all women were incapable of being faithful, Shahryar determined to marry a virgin each morning, then kill her at night. Scheherazade, who loved Shahryar, volunteers to marry him, equally determined to survive and make Shahryar fall in love with her. To accomplish this, she began telling him stories every night for 1001 nights, each night leaving the story incomplete so Shahryar would have to wait for the next night to hear the end. At the end of the 1001 nights, when Scheherazade tells the King she has no more tales to tell, Shahryar realizes he has fallen in love with her, and makes her his queen. * The fictional Wadata is a coastal west African county, which may be based in part on West African nations such as Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) or Sierra Leone. Both countries have experienced recent political instability with factions funding civil war through the trade in blood (aka conflict) diamonds, often mined by young children making a few dollars a day to do so. These small West African countries are former European colonies grabbed during the "Scramble for Africa" following exploration and the discovery of diamonds in the late 1800s, when nearly all of Africa was colonized by France, Britain, Belgium and other European countries. Most are rich in a range of minerals, with post-colonial economies dependent upon mining. The Wadatan national colors and flag are suggestive of the flag adopted between 2010 and 2012 by the modern east African nation of Malawi. * The Italian makes an appearance as part of the Damien Moreau arc. In this episode, she forces Nate to steal evidence related to Moreau from one of Moto's lockers. The evidence as it turns out, were documents linking her to Moto's diamond money laundering. Trivia * This episode includes the reappearance of Sophie's alias Kristy Conolly, an expert in PR first seen in The Miracle Job. This character allows the New Zealand born/British raised Bellman to use her natural Kiwi accent. * Nnamdi Asomugha, who played Moto's security guard, is a cornerback for the NFL's Oakland Raiders (as of the time of production) and Philadelphia Eagles. He is American-born, but of Nigerian descent. * The reporter Guy Hamilton, played by Eliot, was named for Mel Gibson's character in The Year of Living Dangerously. * The decorations seen in the background when Nate talks to the Italian during the concert are from the "Sciencical" in The Fairy Godparents Job. * According to the check that Nathan hands to the client, "Leverage Associates" is incorporated in Miami, Florida. The check is made out for five hundred thousand dollars. Assuming they sold the Stradivarius violin for its stated $4.5 million value, the Leverage crew made $4 million. Category:Episodes Category:Season 3